You are here:

A mother's thanks to the woman who saved her little girl

“Now we were in a small meeting room at the Gold Coast Child & Youth Mental Health Service.

Before us was the woman we had been told could help us, if anyone could. And there was the catch: if anyone could.”

That woman was Gold Coast Health Senior Psychologist Kim Hurst (pictured), who has received high praise from a local mother in a first-person article in The Australian Women’s Weekly about her 11-year-old daughter’s battle with anorexia.

Ruth Mathewson’s hard-hitting story is an emotional insight into a mother’s love, our Eating Disorder Program and how clinicians such as Kim are changing the lives of patients and their families.

“Countless times I phoned Kim in tears," Ruth writes. "(She) became a beacon of rationality and empathy through the turmoil of our lives. She could see progress where we saw pain. She empathised and encouraged us to hold our nerve. She reinforced the importance of allowing no ‘gaps’ in the wall against anorexia.

“Kim taught us to visualise anorexia as an intruder, a beatable enemy. We could not allow (our daughter) to see the disease as part of herself … Kim shored up our collapsing confidence in our parenting skills. ‘No amount of being the best parent ever, or having the best household, will make you immune from this,’ she says.”